The Xiaomi Sound Outdoor Speaker is the latest portable Bluetooth speaker from the brand. The speaker has a 30W output, dual driver design, IP67 protection and the ability to pair up to 100 speakers at once.
Sound Outdoor has a typical portable Bluetooth speaker design with a tubular shape. Almost the entire exterior is covered in fabric with a rubber strip at the back that also forms a loop. The black model shown here has contrasting orange loops but the red and blue models get matching red and blue loops.
The Sound Outdoor has two active drivers in the front, including a 20W woofer and a 10W mid-range driver. This is aided by two passive radiators at either end of the tube, which work together with the woofer to passively boost low frequencies.
There are three buttons on the back of the unit, which control power, pairing and syncing with other speakers. A flap covers the USB-C connector used for charging. The Sound Outdoor does not have an audio jack for wired audio input and can only work with Bluetooth.
As for Bluetooth, the Sound Outdoor supports Bluetooth 5.4 with SBC. There is no NFC so pairing has to be done manually. The main party trick of this speaker is that it can be paired with up to 99 others of the same model to create a chain of 100 speakers playing together. While I didn’t have the other 99 speakers to test with, I did watch a Xiaomi demo where they connected four speakers across the room and had them all play in perfect sync. You can simply connect two speakers to get stereo sound.
The sound works well as a party speaker for outdoor indoor use. The woofer and passive radiators can move a surprising amount of air, resulting in a powerful, punchy sound that can get loud enough even with just one unit. The sound does not distort even at maximum volume.
Outside, you don’t get the same thump and bass response and the sound is flatter as a result.
For critical listening, the speaker has some problems. The unit requires careful placement as the bass response benefits from being placed closer to a wall or corner and the speaker being a certain distance from the listener. However, the mids and highs are very directional and you lose a lot of clarity in the sound unless the speaker is directly in front of you. The highs, in general, are fairly dull even when facing the speaker as there is no dedicated tweeter.
The speaker is also mono only, which shouldn’t be too surprising but there have been Bluetooth speakers in the past in this form factor with a stereo configuration. The result of the mono configuration means that sometimes the music sounds quieter than it should because the wide stereo imaging in the recording is condensed into a single channel. If stereo sound is important to you, you may want to consider investing in another unit.
Sound Outdoor has good latency performance when tested with a single unit. Audio is always in sync with video content when tested with different sources. However, latency was not tested with multiple paired units, and video synchronization goes out the window when multiple speakers are paired.
Sound Outdoor also includes a microphone for calls. During testing the microphone quality was abysmal, the audio was barely audible and even the speaker was shouty and muffled to boot. You should not use this speaker for voice calls at all.
Xiaomi claims 12 hours of battery life for the Sound Outdoor when played at 50% volume, which is par for the course for devices of this size in this segment. The speaker charges in about 2.5 hours with a 15W or higher charger. Charging is one-way only and you cannot use the speaker as a power bank to charge other devices.
Overall, the Xiaomi Sound Outdoor Speaker offers good performance at an affordable price. At INR 3,999, it costs half of competing products from brands like JBL and Sony while being just as good. If you don’t care about NFC or aux input, Sound Outdoor is a great option.
